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Acer boards e-books bandwagon

'We should participate before market settles down'

Acer is eying up e-books and TV to keep sales growing. The ambition, heralded yesterday by Acer chairman Stan Shih, shows the Taiwanese PC powerhouse is more comfortable building out a consumer electronics business, than striking out for the enterprise.

Noting that the PC "actually is a mature industry", Shih thinks e-books are a big opportunity for companies like his own. Dell and Apple seem to have drawn the same conclusion.

“We should participate before the industry settles down,” Shih told Bloomberg “If settled down, there’s no room for us. So, we have to find the right timing, not too early, not too late.”

No hurry there, then.

Acer is also test selling TVs, Shih reveals. This is a much more formidable challenge, with the top five players, including Samsung, LG and Sony, well entrenched and Taiwanese contract manufacturers relatively weak. Acer sub-contracts all manufacturing to third parties.